What Does Psalm 107:20 Mean?
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
He sent his word, and healed them, and delivered them from their destructions.THE KEY
The sent word heals by carrying a person out of what is destroying them.
THE MEANING
The word reaches you where destruction has taken hold, bringing healing and a way out. What is ruining you does not have the final claim on your wholeness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that once destruction begins, you are beyond reach.
THE ROOT
שָׁלַח
shalach
GROWS FROM
שלח
To send forth, send away, or release.
“sends” in this verse is shalach. The word is dispatched into the place where people are suffering; it is not merely spoken about from a distance. Shalach holds sending and release together, so the verse’s healing begins with something reaching them and setting them free.
ALSO GROWS
Shiloach: “Sent”; the name of the waters of Shiloah.
שִׁלֹחַ
The name preserves the image of waters sent forth, echoing the word that goes out to bring restoration.
mishloach: A sending or dispatch.
מִשְׁלוֹחַ
This branch keeps the action of sending visible: what is sent moves from its source toward its recipient.
רָפָא
rapha
GROWS FROM
רפא
To heal or restore health.
“heals” in this verse is rapha. Healing here sits beside deliverance: the people are healed and brought out from what is destroying them. רָפָא (rapha, heal) also echoes רָפָה (raphah, loosen or let go) in sound, though the written roots differ; the verse’s movement from healing to release makes that echo resonant.
ALSO GROWS
rophe: A healer.
רֹפֵא
This branch names the one who brings healing, showing that the root includes the agent as well as the act.
refu’ah: Healing or a cure.
רְפוּאָה
This branch names healing as a restored condition, the result described in the verse.
מָלַט
malat
GROWS FROM
מלט
To escape, slip away, or bring safely out.
“slips them free” in this verse is malat. Delivered carries the sense of escape: the people do not remain inside the destruction that has held them. The verse presents healing as movement out of ruin, not mere relief while the ruin continues.
ALSO GROWS
nimlat: Escaped or got away.
נִמְלַט
This form makes the movement from danger explicit: the person is no longer held where destruction reaches.
himlit: Brought safely through or caused to escape.
הִמְלִיט
This form highlights the active deliverance in the verse: someone brings the endangered person out.
THE PATTERN
A word that goes forth reaches a condition and accomplishes restoration there.
So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.The commander of a hundred answered and said, Lord, I am not enough for you to come under my roof, but only speak the word, and my servant will be healed.THE THREAD
He sends out his word and melts them; he causes his breath to blow, and the waters flow.This verse uses the same Hebrew root for “send” and the same word for “word.” Its image of thaw and flowing waters makes the effect visible: what is locked begins to move.
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